BACK ON THE BUSES

The draft Local Transport Bill, published in May, had three main aims. The first, to give local authorities more power to improve local bus services. Since deregulation of buses over 20 years ago councils and passenger transport authorities in metropolitan areas have had no control over frequency, routes or fares of services provided by private bus operators.

This was the draft Bill’s main area of controversy from the start. Outside London, bus use in Britain has been in long-term decline, with a few notable exceptions such as Brighton, Cambridge and York, where councils have entered into effective partnerships with bus operators. Local authorities wanted the power to introduce franchising of bus services, otherwise known as ‘quality contracts’, allowing them to award contracts in which they would set fares, frequency and the quality of service over a route or routes and remove the existing operator. Existing provisions for quality contracts are so onerous that none has ever been set up. The Bill would remove some of the barriers.

Local authorities would have liked the government to go further; bus operators argued that the success of partnerships in some places showed quality contracts were superfluous.

The draft Bill’s provisions have gone through without significant change into the Bill, and it is likely that quality contracts will remain a last resort, while providing a spur on operators to agree to partnerships.

Partnerships themselves are strengthened, though the draft proposals to expand their scope to cover frequencies, timings and maximum fares will now be subject to there being ‘no admissible objections’ from operators. In addition, local traffic commissioners will get powers to order bus companies to invest in improving a service, and the impose penalties for not providing punctuality data to allow performance monitoring.

The second aim of the Bill was to reform transport governance, to bring about better co-ordination between passenger transport authorities and metropolitan districts, and to allow groups of councils to get together and propose new arrangements in their area. After consultation the Department for Transport described as ‘near-unanimous agreement’ that there was scope for improvement of governance. The Bill provides for passenger transport authorities/executives, which will be renamed ‘integrated transport authorities’ (ITAs), to make proposals to change their boundaries, and for groups of local authorities to propose forming a new ITA.

Candidates to take advantage of this power are expected to be the conurbations of Bristol/Bath and Southampton, helped in Southampton’s case by a change to the draft to allow the new authority to follow district rather than county boundaries. Secondary legislation will allow the secretary of state to put the proposals into effect.

The draft Bill’s third aim was a tidying-up of provisions covering the introduction of road pricing schemes by local authorities. There are no provisions for legal powers to introduce road pricing nationally.

Road pricing proposals are generally uncontentious. The secretary of state’s role in approving schemes will be removed, and any funds raised will be hypothecated to support local transport policies indefinitely rather than for ‘an initial period’.

On introduction to the House of Lords for first reading on 7 November, a fourth aim was added: the creation of a new ‘passenger champion’ for bus and coach users. A wholly new proposal for a new body for which consultation revealed ‘broad support’. The precise scope, membership and constitution of such a body has yet to be defined, and the Bill allows for the creation either of a completely new body or for the remit of the rail passengers’ council to be extended.

David Fowler is Editor of Transport Times.